TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. — DEPT. OF ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY. 363 



But the distinctness of ' thought ' from ' imagination ' may perhaps be made 

 clearer by the drawing out fully what we really do when we make some simple 

 judgment, as, e.g., that ' a negro is black.' Here, in the first place, we directly 

 and explicitly affirm that there is a conformity between the external thing, ' a 

 negro,' and the external quality, ' blackness ' — the negro possessing that quality. 

 We affirm secondarily and implicitly a conformity between the two external entities 

 and the two corresponding internal concepts. And thirdly, and lastly, we also 

 implicitly affirm the existence of a conformity between the subjective judgment 

 and the objective existence. 



All that it seems to me evident that sentience can do, is to associate feelings and 

 images of sensible phenomena, variously related, in complex aggregations ; but not 

 to apprehend sensations as ' facts ' at all, still less as internal facts, which are the 

 signs of external facts. It may be conceived as marking successions, likenesses 

 and unlikenesses of phenomena, but not as recognising such phenomena as true. 

 Animals, as I have fully admitted, apprehend things in different relations, but no 

 one that I know of has brought any evidence that they apprehend them as related, 

 or their relations as relations. A dog may feel shame, or possibly (though I do not 

 think probably) a migrating bird may feel agony at the imagination of an abandoned 

 brood ; but these feeliDgs have nothing in common with an ethical judgment, such 

 as that of an Australian, who, having held out his leg for the punishment of 

 spearing, judges that he is wounded more than his common law warrants. 



Animals, it is notorious, act in ways in which they would not act had 

 they reason; while, as far as I have observed or read, all they do is 

 explicable by the association of sensations, imaginations, and emotions, such 

 as take place in our own lower faculties. We cannot, of course, prove a 

 negative, but we have no right to assume the existence of that for which there is 

 no evidence, without which all the facts can be explained, and which if it did 

 exist would make a multitude of observed facts impossible. Apes (like dogs and 

 cats) warm themselves with pleasure at deserted fires, yet, though they see wood 

 burning and other wood lying by, though they have arms and hands as we have 

 and the same sensient faculties, they have never, so far as I know, been recorded 

 to have added fuel to maintain their comfort. Swallows will continue to build on 

 a house which they see has begun to be pulled down, and no animal can be 

 shown to have made use of antecedent experience to intentionally improve upon 

 the past. 



If, on the other hand, animals were capable of deliberately acting in concert, 

 the effects would soon make themselves known to us so forcibly as to prevent 

 the possibility of mistake. 



Mr. Lewes has not hesitated to affirm 1 that 'between animal and human 

 intelligence there is a gap which can only be bridged over by an addition from 

 without,' and he also says : - ' The animal world is a continuum of smells, sights,, 

 touches, tastes, pains, and pleasures : it has no objects, no laws, no distinguishable 



abstractions, such as self and not self.' 'If we see a bud, after we have 



learned that it is a bud, there is always a glance forward at the flower and back- 

 ward at the seed but what animal sees a bud at all except as a -visible sign 



of some other sensation F ' As a friend of mine, Professor Clarke, 3 has put it : 'In 

 ourselves sensations presently set the intellect to work ; but to suppose that they do 

 so in the dog is to beg the question that the dog has an intellect, A cat to bestir 

 itself to obtain its scraps after dinner, need not entertain any belief that the clat- 

 tering of the plates when they are washed is usually accompanied by the 

 presence of food for it, and that to secure its share it must make certain move- 

 ments ; for quite independently of such belief, and by virtue of mere association, 

 the simple objective conjunction of the previous sounds, movements, and consequent 

 sensations of taste, would suffice to set up the same movements on the present 

 occasion.' Let certain sensations and movements become associated, and then the 

 former need not be noted : they only need to exist for the association to produce its- 

 effects, and simulate apprehension, deliberation, inference, and volition. ' When 



1 Problems of Life and Mind, vol. i. p. 156. 3 L. c. p. 140. 



3 Questions on Psychology, p. 9. 



